One of my favourite things to bake are these Christmas Tree Cookies, which I make for all my nieces and nephews at our family Christmas party. They’re yummy, fun and ever so easy to make. Here’s the recipe.

Christmas tree cookies recipe

Halloween’s on its way and to help make it even more crafty and fun, Argos are running a competition for our UK readers to win some awesome monster toys.

How to enter the Argos Halloween competition

Entrants can either draw, dress up, bake or craft a monster and share their pics on Facebook or Twitter with the hashtag #Argosmakeamonster. Or, you can email your entries to argos.competitions@gmail.com The scarier the better!

Monstrous prizes for the Halloween competition!

Argos are offering spooky and scary monster prizes including Monster High dolls, Moshi Monsters, and Lego too, so creative kids can build their own monsters. There are 3 prizes in all, worth over £50 per prize. The winners can choose which prize they’d like.

The competition runs from 12th October 2014 to 10th November 2014 and is open to UK residents only.

The competition is being run by Argos Ltd and is subject to the following terms and conditions: see here for details.

Update 15th November 2014:

The competition winners are as follows:

Jenette O.

Zoe T. and

Joy D.

Here’s this week’s Play Planner

See you at the Just So Festival?

Have you heard of the Just So Festival? It’s an amazing, family-friendly weekend festival taking place 15/16/17 August 2014, in Cheshire, UK. It’s ‘a magical weekend of creative adventures’, and my daughter describes with high praise as ‘almost better than Christmas’!

On with this week’s Play Planner…

Learn to read in 4 weeks for free with Reading Eggs

Reading Eggs provides a comprehensive range of online reading lessons and eBooks that teach children aged 3-13 the literacy skills needed for lifetime reading success. They’re sponsoring this week’s Play Planner and offering you a 4 week free trial of their resources.

Full of educationally sound, fun and interactive activities, Reading Eggs focuses on the most fundamental skill needed in school: reading. Children from 3 to 7 years of age, or older children struggling with reading, will enjoy the huge variety of reading lessons, activities and games that make up the Reading Eggs programme.

Reading Eggspress continues the reading adventure for 7–13 year olds, focusing on comprehension and grammar.

Take advantage of their special, no obligation4 week FREE trialtoday and see how your child’s reading improves by using Reading Eggs.